Modern Biotechnology: for Better or for Worse?

Abstract

We have tried in this book to convince the reader of this proposition. Now that it is finished, we the authors are more convinced than ever. So we hope that, having read the book, you too can genuinely subscribe to this point of view. In the writing of this publication we have used literally thousands of articles from websites, newspapers, technical and scientific journals, books, encyclopaedias, digital newsletters, annual reports, other reports, and so forth. We have borrowed many sentences, especially from scientific journalists. We have tried to create an anthology of the many things that have been written in the area of modern biotechnology for the layman. These are frequently referred to in the text and the more scientific ones also in the list at the end of each chapter. Websites are taken up as footnotes. To facilitate visiting them, they are also available as a link on the publisher’s website.107 We have spent years writing what you have just read. However, developments in modern biotechnology move at such high speed that we have repeatedly had to rewrite parts of the text. We cannot therefore guarantee that references have not accidentally been omitted, and we offer our apologies should this be the case.